Doors Come in Many Guises
by shadowinRW
Summary: Shouldn't Slytherins be a little more respectful and interested in a parselmouth?  How Harry's second year might have gone if the school had reacted differently.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! A quick word from me: I have decide to try my hand at writing again after a rather spectacular meltdown about two years ago. That means that my other two fics are probably not going to be finished. I feel a bit bad about that, but my likes and dislikes have changed a lot since then, so I don't think I'd be able to do my best.**

**I own neither England nor the Crown Jewels nor Harry Potter. At the moment, all I own is my imagination. And my computer. And stuff. So I'm not destitute or anything, just lacking in Harry Potter. Sigh.**

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><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

Harry stared down the path created by Justin Finch-Fletchley, feeling slightly bemused. What did he think he was playing at? Well, obviously he was playing at pretending he knew how duel. Clearly he had no idea what he was doing. Honestly, yelling at a snake to calm it down? What was he thinking. At least Lockheart had thought to use magic, the idiot.

As if summoned by Harry's derisive thoughts, Lockheart began moving towards the boy, and Harry fought back a cringe as the man placed his hand on his shoulder before looking down at him seriously. Harry fought not to move away as he stared at the floor, willing Lockheart's feet to move no closer, and then he jumped as warm breath blew by his ear, and the man leaned down to murmur in Harry's ear, "detentio-"

And then the too close presence fell backward; the clammy hand slipped from Harry's shoulder, and he heard Lockheart begin to speak in his normal, overbearingly cheerful voice: "I say, Mr. Malfoy, do try to watch where you're going."

Malfoy took no notice of Lockheart, or of the whispers growing steadily louder as people nudged each other out of the way as they crowded closer to the stage or scramble to follow Justin in his undignified retreat from the hall. He stared at the green-eyed boy before him; the boy who looked no less clueless as the whispers grew louder and the stares grew more intense, only more uncomfortable.

A sneer began to form on Malfoy's lips when he looked up from his inspection and saw the two people that never left Harry's side fighting their way through the crowd, their eyes fixed on their best friend, panic written all over their faces.

"Really, Potter, if your little sycophants don't get over their little moral dilemma soon and start using stinging hexes, they'll never make it here in time."

Harry's face darkened with rage, anger at the insult to his friends completely overriding his ability to hear the important part of Malfoy's sentence-_in time_. His meaning was made clear, however, when suddenly people were shouting, and hexes were flying, and hands were grabbing, and Harry was struggling, because people had grabbed him and were hurrying him through a crowd of angrily hissing students, and they weren't Ron and Hermione because he could hear their distressed cries of "Harry!" from somewhere behind and to the left of him.

A pinching feeling along his right thigh, and Harry's legs went out of control. A curse, and then a girl's voice, "Jelly-Legs, a strong one too, I can't get it off." Harry wrenched himself around to face his kidnapper, only to collapse on the ground as his legs gave out from under him.

Pansy Parkinson glared down at him, hands on hips, an indignant expression on her face. "Do you mind trying not to sabotage our attempts to save you from the rest of the school, Potter? Only I don't fancy getting hit with some of the curses some of the older students were throwing around back there."

"Parkinson?" Harry asked, confusion now warring with anger and making his brain feel like complete mush. Honestly, how did Hermione go through all those mood change so quickly and still be the smartest of their year?

"No, it's Lady Nemue. I thought it would be fun to waltz around as a twelve-year old girl and save some speccy git's arse at the same time!" Pansy snapped, looking for all the world that she would really love to stomp her foot, but was unwilling to mar her spectacular bout of sarcasm with such a childish action. Harry was just getting ready to see if he could get the girl with the unfortunate nose to drop her poise and throw a hissy fit, when someone grabbed him from behind and hauled him to his feet.

"Really Potter, even Draco doesn't think you're this much of an idiot, and he rants about your lack of brainpower every Thursday at four PM sharp." Harry attempted to put a name and face to this new, male voice, but gave up when the different sneers his memory conjured up started to blur together.

"Who are you?" He asked instead, cautiously letting his weight fall onto his legs and raying they would hold them up. They didn't.

"Really Potter?" The voice sounded a bit breathless now, but that was understandable considering the effort whoever-it-was has put in to keeping the both of them from collapsing. "Are you that caught up in your own Hogwarts world that you can't be bothered to learn the names of anyone outside of you circle of friends and Malfoy?"

Harry promptly readied himself to argue his defense, but all he got out was a rather indignant "ER!" as he realized that he actually didn't pay much attention to most people and events. In his defense, Harry tended to be rather busy trying not to die, and he didn't see how socializing could enable him to duck faster, but that was still no excuse to not know the names and faces of at least half of his year.

Lost in his self-loathing and realizations, Harry had missed the part when Pansy and the boy who belonged to the voice had hustled him up a flight of stairs and down a corridor. He did notice when he was dropped on the ground said, almost casually, "It's Zabini, by the way. Blaise Zabini."

Harry, who was still confused and feeling distinctly out of his element resorted to sarcasm and asked, "Are you a relation of Bond, James Bond?"

"I don't know," said Blaise, after a few moments of contemplation. "I'll have to ask mother to consult our genealogy."

Harry's snicker was muffled by the door slamming open and the rest of the Slytherins in his year filing in. Crabbe and Goyle lounged on either side of the door, while the other Slytherins formed a half-circle around Harry with Draco Malfoy at their center.

After half a minute of Harry dubiously eyeing Malfoy, and the look of impatience on the blond growing steadily more intense, Malfoy finally decided to break the silence.

:"Well?"

Harry gave him an odd look. "Well, what?"

"Well, are you going to stand, or will you all have us sit on the floor like, like, commoners?" The look of impatience was replaced by disgust.

"Can't," Harry replied, feeling quite cross.

"What do you mean, 'can't'?" snapped Malfoy.

"Oh!" The cry came from Pansy, standing off to the right of Malfoy. "I completely forgot: he was hit by a rather nasty Jelly-Legs Jinx. I couldn't get it off. Nott, could you-"

A brown-haired boy whom Harry had completely overlooked knelt, muttered a few things under his breath, and stood back up. Harry could immediately feel the strength return to his legs, and gratefully scrambled to his feet, nodding his thanks in Nott's direction.

He turned back to Malfoy, crossed his arms, and drawled, almost gleefully, "Well?"

Surprise and approval flashed across before he quickly schooled his features into a stoic mask. Harry suppressed the urge to tell him that the look made him appear to be constipated, as his face was entirely too young to pull off stoic, but he decided he'd been hexed enough for the day.

"Well what?"

Harry rolled his eyes, but replied readily enough, "Well, what's with the rescue and the weird looks? What do you want?

Malfoy glared at him. "They are not _weird_ looks: they are contemplative. Obviously."

A snort sounded from behind him, but Malfoy ignored, choosing instead to level a contemplative look in Harry's direction. Harry decided not to mention that the gaze still looked weird to him.

"However," Malfoy continued, "to answer your entirely vague and badly phrased question, we rescued you because you are a parselmouth, and as such part of Slytherin House. It is our duty to protect you both as family, and as a relic."

Harry had seen a relic before-a yellowing bit of bone tucked in a dusty corner of an out-of the way church-and he didn't think he liked the idea of being one himself, but he was more interested in what a parselmouth was to argue that particular point. Upon receiving completely horrified looks from everyone in the room after asking what Malfoy-Call-Me-Draco meant by the word, Harry thought he would have done better to argue.

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><p>Five hours later, much hot cocoa had been drunk, Snape has stalked in, turned on his heel and billowed out no less than four times, and Harry has been set up in his very own Slytherin bed. He had impressed the entire house with the story of the Boa Constrictor he once set on Dudley, and somewhat understood why people had been throwing hexes at him. Although he still thought that in was a bit ridiculous for seventeen year-olds to react in fear to a titchy second year, he understood better when Tracy Davis told him about the Dark Lord Arnot, who began his recruiting and massacring at the tender age of nine. Still Arnot's reign of terror was very brief and had occurred over three hundred years ago.<p>

When he thought about it, Harry decided he was still quite miffed at the students' reactions. Did they really think he was capable of hurting people like that. After the episode from last year. What was he? A Magic Eight Ball? He supposed he had killed Quirrel, but he was mostly unconscious at the time, so did it really count? Harry rolled over again and wondered if wizards had psychiatrists. Then he went to sleep.

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><p><strong>A little too rushed? Or was it all right? I'll be doing a bit of juggling, and dialogue's not my best, so tell me what you think, yeah?<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Sorry for the wait, everyone. I was travelling and then studying, and time just got away from me.

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><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

Something was tickling his nose. Harry wrinkled the offended appendage and sneezed a little. Something else tickled his ear. Harry batted at it and rolled over, dragging with him the silky smooth blankets that warmed his feet even as they soothed and cooled his face. They really were wonderful blankets, Harry mused to himself, much better than the blankets in Gryffindor tow-

Harry realized that he was sleeping in the dormitory of the house he still thought probably had hidden away corners with the blood of Muggleborns dripping down the walls and sat bolt upright even as whoever-it-was-tickling-him grabbed his feet and pulled. Harry shrieked and twisted as his stomach muscles protested being directed in two different directions at once, and the idiot tugging on him yelped as one of Harry's feet connected with something solid.

Someone handed Harry his glasses as he struggled upright, and he promptly shoved them on his face, paused, took them off, and put them back on right-side-up. Malfoy-call-me-Draco glared up at Harry, holding his nose. Tracy Davis stood next to the blood, staring cross-eyed at the blood that dripped between his fingers.

Oops.

"I tink you boke by nose."

Eh?

Harry blinked at Malfoy, trying to figure out what the usually articulate twelve year was attempting to say. Something about a nose…

"Botter! you boke by nose! Don't just look at be like a sdubid i-i-id-sdubid berson! Ow!"

Tracy looked apologetically at Harry, having just whacked Malfoy over the back of the head with the book she had been holding. Harry blinked. Did she always carry books with her? He distinctly remembered her having two during the conversation yesterday after the whole snake fiasco…oh. Damn. Hermione and Ron must be frantic, thinking he'd been kidnapped by evil Slytherins. They didn't know yet that the Slytherins weren't evil-at least this years lot (Harry hadn't met the other Slytherins yet, but he was pretty sure there must be some evil ones in the house. Probably in the older years, though…they'd had time to cultivate their resentment and evil squickiness of doom); they were just severely unaware of the fine points of talking with people their own age, despite those hoity-toity lessons on etiquette they had defended so vehemently the day before.

"Harry?"

He snapped out of his rambling contemplations-really, no wonder Snape thought he was a dunderhead-and looked at Tracy, who was staring at him in concern. Malfoy seemed to be muttering under his breath.

Tracy seemed to be measuring the width of Harry's pupils. Having decided that they looked relatively normal (and how would she know that?), she backed away and said, with a barely hidden smirk, "Draco's just mad that you broke his nose, but don't worry. Greg will fix it up easily. Do you have any idea what time it is?"

Harry gave her a blank look, and she sighed. "It's nearly noon. The rest of the school's in an uproar. The Gryffindors are convinced that we've either killed you or brainwashed you into hating mud-muggleborns; the Ravenclaws are playing devil's advocate and working them into a frenzy, and the Hufflepuffs are preaching doom and despair. It's wonderful!"

Harry had no idea why she thought that a clearly nightmarish situation was wonderful, but he thought that, since Tracy clearly had no morals against hitting injured comrades-and didn't Malfoy look even paler than usual?-she would have absolutely nothing stopping her from shoving her point of view in his face. Violently.

Instead, he said, "Why don't we go find Greg?"

He had learned earlier that at the start of their first year, the Slytherin firsties had all been advised to figure out who did what best-whether it be schoolwork or otherwise, and improve that knowledge before they started trying to branch out in their knowledge. Harry had realized that this was why a) everyone seemed to think that a house full of the ambitious could seem to have so many one-trick-ponies b) this was probably why Snape cut his younger years so much slack, and c) how the Slytherins got away with so much. Disgruntled, Harry wondered why the hell the other houses didn't seem to have such a clever system. Pansy had snorted and gently patted Harry on his newly groomed and improved head.

Now, Tracy simply nodded and bent down to help the still freely bleeding Malfoy to his feet before heading out the door. Harry absentmindedly followed the two, going over the list of talents he had learned the past day.

Draco Malfoy: Potions and Politics

Vincent Crabbe: Herbology

Gregory Goyle: Healing

Theodore Nott: Counter Charms and Shields

Blaise Zabini: Hexes and Curses

Lillian Moon: Charms

Pansy Parkinson: Astronomy and Genealogy

Daphne Greengrass: Grooming and Etiquette

Tracey Davis: Transfiguration

Millicent Bulstrode: Contacts and Blackmail

Harry wasn't sure what he thought about a bunch of twelve-year olds who considered etiquette and blackmail among major talents that should be cultivated, but he didn't really feel like arguing the point with either Daphne or Millicent. Millicent could probably sit on him until he agreed with everything she said, and Daphne-golden, ethereal Daphne-was scary. He didn't know what she would do to him if he scoffed at her contributions, and he didn't want to find out.

He wasn't even going to think the words Pansy, Genealogy, and useless in the same hundred words. Absolutely not.

After firmly deciding that girls were strange and mysterious and could probably slaughter Voldemort if they ever decided to take over the world, Harry looked up from his feet and blinked at the sight of the Slytherin common room.

It was a mess.

The first years were huddled in the corner; wide-eyed, white, and…

Sporting red and gold striped hair?

Harry looked around wildly and ducked as a red spell jetted by him. He straightened back up and glared at the caster. Millicent blushed and shrugged. Aim was not her specialty.

Harry turned his glare onto the causes of the chaos in the common room: the Weasley twins. Before he could draw in enough breath to bellow, though, yet another red head had invaded his personal spaces, wrapped his arms around Harry-who was only just starting to understand Malfoy's distaste of all things bright red-and bellowed, _right in Harry's ear_, "I've got him! Retreat! Gred, Forge, cover me!"

Feeling completely baffled as to why Ron had suddenly decided to emulate an army officer in a very bad war film, Harry tried to wriggle out of Ron's grasp, only to realize that his friend's lanky figure was really very bony, and that bones were uncomfortable when digging into one's stomach and sternum, and that really, struggling was only going to make this whole fiasco even more uncomfortable than it already was.

Out of the common room, down the hall, up the stairs (and really, did Ron _have_ to be so _bouncy_ when he climbed stairs with a captive thrown over his shoulder?), and down another corridor before another, very welcome, voice intruded on the unbearable jouncing, jolting run.

"Honestly, Ron, put poor Harry down before he passes out. All the blood is rushing to his head. Look! He's all red."

"Hermione!" gasped Harry as he was practically dropped to the ground ("Cor, Harry, you really need to eat more. Do you know how _uncomfortable_ it is to carry you?") "What in Merlin's name is going on?"

"Oh, Harry!" He tried not to choke as his vision and airways were blocked by bushy brown hair. "I'm so glad you're alright!"

"Yeah, mate," said Ron, still rubbing his shoulder. Boney? Harry would show him _boney_! "Who knows what those slimy snakes would have done to you if we hadn't got there in time."

"Snakes aren't slimy." Harry felt like banging his against the wall when he felt his mouth open and start talking without his permission. Ron looked like he thought Harry already had banged his head enough to give him a severe concussion.

"Well, no," said Hermione. "They are rather dry, aren't they?"

"Dry? Dry?" Ron bellowed, looking like his head was about to explode. Harry wondered absently if strokes ran in Ron's family and if, at twelve, Ron was in any danger. "Hermione! We're not here to talk about bestiality!"

Harry choked. Hermione looked torn between giggling like the schoolgirl she was or fainting. "_Zoology_, Ron. Bestiality is, is-"

"Something else," Harry supplied, lips twitching at Hermione's torn expression.

"We're not here to talk about word thingies either!" Ron was now waving his arms around rather indignantly. "We're here to talk about Harry being brainwashed by sli- by rather dry snakes!"

"Funny," said Harry. "I don't feel very brainwashed."

"Well, no," Hermione answered. "I didn't think you would."

"Exactly!" Ron was shaking now. "You wouldn't feel brainwashed if they did it properly! You'd feel like this was how you were always supposed to feel!"

"Well, actually, I didn't think Harry would feel brainwashed because the people who grabbed him were twelve." Hermione looked concerned, but Harry wasn't sure whom she felt more worry for: Ron or himself.

"They start them early on nef-nef- evil plots and talents and, and whatever else they need to act slimy but really be rather dry." Ron crossed his arms defensively and nodded his head rather vigorously.

"Did you mean nefarious?" Harry tilted his to one side as he eyed Ron in concern. The was bad. Ron only tried to use big word when he was absolutely conviced of something and had made it his personal mission to convince everyone else to come around to his thinking. Which was really rather counterproductive, and stammering and using very wrong and odd words tended to distract people from the original point Ron was trying to make.

"Sorry, Ron. What were you trying to say?"

Ron's face turned even redder. "We have to save you from being brainwashed!"

"But, I'm not," Harry protested. "Blaise-"

"Who?"

"Blaise."

Ron still looked confused.

"Zabini?" Harry tried again.

Still no recognition.

"The dark, quiet boy in our year at Slytherin?"

"Sorry, mate." Ron shrugged. "I only know Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and that Parkinson bint."

"Don't call her a bint!" Harry cried, feeling indignant on the behalf of the very scary Pansy.

"Well she is! She's a Slytherin!"

"She's _twelve_, she isn't old enough o be a bint yet."

"I'm with Harry on that one." Hermione remarked.

"She's a _Slytherin_!" Ron seemed convinced that this particular line needed no further backup and clearly explained the root of all evil.

"Ron," said Harry seriously, "with your lines of reasoning, you really should consider becoming a politician. Or maybe one of those television preachers."

Hermione stifled a giggle, and Ron narrowed his eyes.

"Merlin, Harry! All it took was one night with them, and you're already starting to sound like them. Going to start setting snakes on more people like Justin? Who's next? Hermione?"

"What are you talking about?" Asked Harry. "I haven't set any snakes on anyone."

"You did it just last night," screamed Ron. "You want to get rid of all the muggleborns! I bet it _was_ you who did for Mrs. Norris and Creevey!"

"Er, Ron." Hermione looked bewildered. "We were with Harry when Mrs. Norris was attacked, and Harry was in the hospital wing when Colin went down."

"He was faking it!"

"His _bones_ were _vanished_. You can't fake that?"

"He's being taken over by evil, Hermione. The snakes have corrupted him! He'll go after you next because you're muggleborns."

"Sorry to put a dampener on you infallible reasoning, Ron." Harry was finally starting to get angry. "But you seem to have forgotten that my _Mum_ was muggleborns."

"Yeah," Ron shouted, "and she's dead, too, isn't she? You did for her before you could even talk properly!"

Harry snapped. Before anyone could do anything, he was on Ron. Punching, kicking, biting scratching. All he knew was that he wanted Ron to _hurt_ as much as that last accusation had hurt him. Deaf to Hermione's shrieks of horror, Harry head butted Ron, who, after his initial surprise of the slender boy hurling himself towards him, had promptly started giving back as good as her got.

It was only when a tall, batlike figure had swooped down on the fight and plucked Harry up by the back of his neck that Hermione was able to grab Ron and clamp her hand over his mouth that the yells, grunts, and thwacking sounds finally died away, leaving in their wake the hoarse sobbing that Harry had bothered to try to stop while he was mauling every inch of Ron he could reach.

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><p><strong>AN**: To those of you who listen to or are television preachers (or politicians), I am not insulting you directly, just playing on stereotypes


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